I’m not talking about some kind of materialistic craving for a better car, a bigger house, or more money. I’m talking about a fundamental feeling that your existence – your career, your city, your partner – is somehow a world apart from the one that should be yours. Sure, there are those gorgeous moments when you can feel yourself alive in your true identity; eyes wide open, bathing in the rays of your own colorful light.

Those occasions are the exception, not the rule, and most ticks of the clock find you awash in numbing grey. Through time’s bleak passage, you can’t help but feel that YOU ARE GREATER THAN THIS AND WERE MEANT FOR MORE. So, just what is one to do when the vision of their true place in the universe is so vastly different from their accepted reality?

The only logical answer is to go crazy.

I don’t mean give oneself over to psychotic breaks, schizophrenic attacks or dissociative episodes…as fun as Showtime TV series make them look. Instead, I’m suggesting that you allow all of the rage, the frustration, and the sadness to push you toward rejecting the day-to-day ins-and-outs of your hyphenatedly disappointing life. You’ve got to get angry enough to push back against the situation that’s responsible for all of the emotional turmoil in the first place. Basically, you need to lose your muphuckin’ mind so you can get it back again, and losing your mind means destabilizing your belief in reality.

Don’t get me wrong. Stability is often a good thing. It can be nice to know that every time a step hits the ground, it will feel exactly the same as it did the day before. But what if, instead of concrete, you were faced with quicksand on a daily basis? Instead of supporting you, with each step your surroundings are slowly dragging you to a horrifyingly suffocating death. In this case, stability is an illusion: your life is static, but there’s nothing stable about it. Recognize this, and your first crazy, rebellious step won’t be too far behind.

Yes, I said rebellion. Your current reality is a prison, created and policed by enemies who seek to stifle your growth for their own benefit. As such, you’ve got to rebel against said reality and its enforcers. This may not be as emotionally easy as it sounds – it could entail rejecting friends, family and even the coppertop formerly known as YOU. But you’ve got to get on with it. Gum up the works. Stick bananas in tail pipes. Throw your fists in the air. The sheep will call you crazy, but you’ll be too busy losing it to hear them. Too busy with your crazy little rebellion.

The first shots of said rebelionita will manifest in various forms, suitable for the personal struggles to which they are intimately connected. It might mean taking back-to-back, unnecessary sick days on Friday and Monday. Maybe you’ll sign up for that spoken word event at the local bar. Perhaps you’ll finally speak to that mohawked cashier at the supermarket. Whatever it is, if you don’t feel a little scared the day before you do it and at least minimally terrified immediately beforehand, then it wasn’t crazy enough. You’ve got to push yourself into the heat of discomfort, ever closer to the flame until your fears are illuminated and the fear of the fear burns away.

Notice, I said the FEAR of the fear: the fear itself will never disappear. When you acknowledge that, it will begin to lose its grip on you, and you’ll start to free yourself from your father’s expectations. From your boss’ intimidations. From your own doubts. You might eventually go crazy enough to quit that corporate job to pursue that passion for dance, or forsake the path of a starving artist to get that law degree you always wanted. Every day, it will become easier for you to do beautiful, painful things that bring you closer to sweet insanity…also known as true life.

2 responses to “Let’s Go Crazy: The Case for Insanity”

I don’t know what to say so I will ramble. Here I am: trying to make “The Decision.” Do I take my talents to [unknown] beach or stay right here on Horrible Beach? The Decision seems to be a no-brainer or is it? I already reject most of the crap that is around me. I keep no secrets about my distaste for the environment surrounding my current existence and further that this is not my life. I am who I am and I try to do me but damn it if this place is like a submarine and , at heart, I am an astronaut.

I am caught at the edge Horrible Beach’s border ready to reject the shit out of this place for something else but I struggle MIGHTILY when I have to make the decision to choose the UNKNOWN over Horrible Beach because I think I know where I’m trying to go. While I don’t know the exact coordinates of that other place, I think I roughly know where it is and MAYBE how to get there. And so, I wait, plan, pack, assess, until the time is right. Oh yes — this is my revolution. Or it FEELS like my revolution. But is it really?

In this stupid little world and environment, I have it all “going for me.” Yet the smoke and mirrors don’t fool me, the water don’t taste right, and the booty butt cheeks don’t clap like they do at Magic City. If I miscalculate my castoff from HB, I could end up in the ABYSS. Should I really fear disappearing into the ABYSS if I miscalculate my intended journey to the specific place I THINK I can locate? My heart jumps just thinking about it! I’m not scared to look, but I get a little shook. I feel like making the wrong decision will permanently derail me from that place that I wish to go. And so, choosing to cast-off means I must accept the possibility of the ABYSS. And that, folks, is the revolution.

So is it worth it? Horrible Beach is a motherfucker. I have no patience for it or its denizens. I don’t believe in it. So rebel I must, fight I can, liberate I … maybe?

In plain speech, should one quit a job before you have your new job? Or to make it more complex and maybe more accurate, should one quit a job BEFORE one has a new job half way across the globe that doesn’t yet exist in the worse economy since … right before the crack era? Some say, “make lemonade out of lemons.” “Horrible Beach ain’t bad if ya workin’.” But since when do take advice to drink lemonade from people with really #@$ed up teeth? I don’t think so. Yet my fear of the ABYSS stymies my move until I figure out my surefire path from Horrible Beach and all its non-existent glory to that place I want to go. So can I really fist pump. Am I a revolutionary? Am I a rebel? No, mofo. I’m not — yet. I suckered myself to sleep trying to use the rules that imprison me to free me. I have always thought the “master’s tools argument” was the biggest cop out in the world. So maybe I shouldn’t be surprised there is blood on my hand, right? But there is still time for me. There is still time for the rebel within to accept the possibility of the rebel without. ~ Lorenzo

“I’m talking about a fundamental feeling that your existence – your career, your city, your partner – is somehow a world apart from the one that should be yours.”

This is what I’ve felt for quite some time, and I do rebel. I will never settle. I don’t even know how to. And one of the ways I push myself into the heat of discomfort, ever closer to the flame until my fears are illuminated and the fear of the fear burns away, is by leaving you these coded little messages.